Word: sasso
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...truth, the two campaign staffs, like rival armies, increasingly tend to resemble each other. Every weekday morning, Sasso in Boston and Baker in Washington preside over strategy meetings designed to fine-tune that day's thematics. The longer-range questions at both meetings are similar: Where will the candidate go next? What will he say? What is the target group of voters? What do the polls say? Which states warrant a heavier advertising budget...
...Dukakis headquarters the major political decisions used to be made at the 9 a.m. departmental meeting that Estrich still chairs. Sasso has pre-empted some of the decision making by creating a loose, informal 8 o'clock gathering with a few key advisers, such as Kirk O'Donnell, Jack Corrigan and Peter Jacobs...
When Baker arrived as planned at Bush headquarters after the G.O.P. convention, he confronted problems far less dire than those that would later bedevil Sasso. One reason: as Tutwiler points out, the top Bush handlers have all fought side by side before. Until Baker took over, this teamwork was undermined by the lack of anyone in firm control of the campaign. Atwater had nominal top authority as campaign manager, but Bush insisted that all decisions be made by consensus. The result was the kind of paralyzing chaos that allowed the Dan Quayle nomination to bring the campaign to the brink...
...soon as Baker arrived, there was no question who was the final authority. The former Treasury Secretary, who has played a major role in every G.O.P. presidential campaign since 1976, has become a figure of such stature that there is no counterpart to him in the Democratic Party. Sasso owes his authority to his personal bonds with Dukakis; Baker has managed the political fortunes of two Republican Presidents, and directed Bush's 1980 primary campaign. Baker, in fact, represents the rare towering figure who is an exception to the political truism that power depends on physical access to the candidate...
...also true that Dukakis' July lead in the polls was destined to fade like a hothouse flower. The Massachusetts Governor, after all, is running against the heir to a popular President who is campaigning on peace and prosperity. But even so, it is hard to exaggerate the problems that Sasso inherited when for the second time he took the tiller of the foundering campaign...